Practical Research for Innovative Cancer Control and Management Office
Kazuhiko Aoyagi, Yoshinori Makino, Yoshifumi Hashimoto, Satoru Sekiya, Hiromi Oda, Kyoko Minamoto, Sachie Ishibashi, Yoko Saito, Shizuka Yamazaki, Hiromi Nakagawa, Takashi Saito
Introduction
The principal mission of PRIMO, which stands for "Practical Research for Innovative Cancer Control Management Office", is to support the program supervisor (PS) and the program officer (PO) of the "Practical Research for Innovative Cancer Control (PRICC)" under the supervision of the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), but PRIMO is also expected to extend its support to individual principal investigators (PIs) in certain areas, giving careful consideration to possible COI (conflicts of interests). PRIMO was established in October 2017 within the National Cancer Center Japan (NCC) as an organization placed directly under the President and thus "insulated" from the NCC’s other functions or organizations.
What We Did
1. Research Progress Management System:
The Research Progress Management System was designed and developed
to monitor the research progress via the PS/PO, AMED staff and PIs
themselves. PIs are asked to register their research progress and
other related information in a web-based system. The system
enables adequate monitoring and may help with coping with the
difficulties and obstacles of each project or boosting the
promising research in a timely manner.
2. Cancer Treatment Research and Development Map:
Cancer Treatment Research and Development Map: PRIMO has
collaborated with JCTN (Japanese Cancer Trial Network) and
released clinical trial portfolios for each type of cancer as the
"Cancer Treatment Research and Development Map" from the PRIMO
homepage to help the planning, evaluation and collaboration of the
clinical and translational research.
3. Data mining support:
One of the challenging or pilot-like parts of the PRIMO project
was the introduction of the "Data Mining" in the support. Two
major categories have been identified in the data mining: 1) The
macroscopic overview mainly for the PS/PO, so that they could
grasp the global trends and status of the entire cancer research
scene to understand the Japanese research portfolio and its
strengths and weaknesses, for better strategic planning of the
cancer research. 2) The microscopic or more focused, on-demand
analysis, which starts with a given topic or keyword from the
PS/PO. Depending on the specific requests, PRIMO uses several data
analysis tools such as clustering and visualization of the data
from multiple sources, including the literature, drugs, clinical
trials, grants, intellectual properties and altmetrics. PRIMO has
generated 3 macroscopic reports in the fiscal years 2017, 2019 and
2021, as well as multiple microscopic reports and presentations
for the PS/PO.
4. Researcher Mapping System:
The AI-supported Researcher Mapping System has been created and
offered to the PS/PO and PIs to visualize the possible links among
researchers based on the degree of relevance between keywords
extracted from paper abstracts and information on co-authorship or
affiliations. The system can bridge the gap between known or
un-recognized areas of research, technologies and resources for
further progress and evolution of the research.
5. Intellectual Property Consultation:
PRIMO has communicated and collaborated with the intellectual
property staff in another AMED cancer research project, P-CREATE,
and provided individual intellectual property consultations upon
PIs' requests. In addition, educational materials are created, and
lectures are offered for PIs. Intellectual property analysis was
also a part of the data mining support as described above.
6. Research Ethics Consultation:
The PRIMO Research Ethics Support Unit has provided research
ethics consultation services to PIs to advise on ethical, legal,
and social issues that arise in the various stages of research
from planning to publication. Moreover, in collaboration with the
ethics support staff in P-CREATE, PRIMO jointly organized a series
of research ethics seminars. The PRIMO Research Ethics Support
Unit also issued newsletters on the important topics in ELSI.
7. Technical and Strategic Support for PIs:
Senior scientists of NIBIOHN (National Institute of Biomedical
Innovation, Health and Nutrition) provided consultations on
fundamental research and drug development strategies in response
to PIs' requests.
8. In July 2021, a new initiative was introduced in PRICC as a trial scheme to help PIs who seek technological support and/or access to clinical specimens and other bioresources, such as PDXs (patient-derived xenografts). PRIMO facilitates match-making between the PIs and technological support groups for possible collaborative agreements.
Future Prospects
Fiscal year 2021 is the last year of the first 5-year term of the AMED project that has supported PRIMO. However, the new PIs in the NCC have been granted a second term PRIMO project starting from FY 2022, and PRIMO will continue to support the PS, PO and PIs mainly in the progress management of each research and development task in the project. We will revise the milestone tables for clinical trials that did not fit the actual situation and adapt them to the overall clinical research agenda in PRICC. A scheme to promote collaborative research between PIs and research institutions that can provide advanced technology and bioresources will be launched in earnest. Implementation of the data mining support developed in this project could expand to basic as well as drug discovery research. The portal site will be also updated as needed. It is expected to be an AMED model for the whole of cancer research and beyond in the future.